Your first birthday is really your second birthday, because the day you were born was your first, amirite?

See, the French have got it right. The word for your birthday in French is "anniversaire" so it's the anniversary of your birthday; e.g., onzième anniversaire = eleventh [anniversary of your] birthday. But saying "Happy 1st Anniversary of your Birthday!" in English is somewhat of a mouthful. :P

by Anonymous 14 years ago

I'm part french, and I never thought of it like that.So technically my sweet 16 is when I'm 15, right?

by Anonymous 14 years ago

No, you're still 16 years old. When you're born, you're 0 years old, but it's your 1st birthday technically. So your sweet sixteen is your 17th birthday. I think... The complications really arise when you're considering what the definition of "birthday" is English is. Dictionary.com lists birthday as both "the anniversary of a birth" and "the day of a person's birth." How confusing...

by Anonymous 14 years ago

You know what? Pretty much just scratch everything I previously said. I think this is what it is: you have ONE birthday; that is, your day of birth. But you can have MULTIPLE birthdays; that is, the anniversaries of your birth. When we celebrate someone's 1st birthday, we're using the "anniversary of your birth" definition of the word. So I think the way we have it currently is correct. I'll still keep my vote as "Yeah You Are!" since I think it's clever. yum

by Anonymous 14 years ago

thanks:)

by Anonymous 14 years ago

That was on Azumanga Daioh xD "How many birth days does the average person have?" "Uhm... 65?" "No, they can have many birthdays, but only one birth day!" /my most weeaboo comment from the day I registered

by Anonymous 14 years ago

In Afrikaans it's 'verjaarsdag' which basically translates to your 'aging a year day'. In English it sounds right if you say you're celebrating your birthday though.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

Wouldn't we be even OLDER if you count that our heartbeat begins 7 weeks in the womb? :)

by Anonymous 14 years ago

Well you weren't born yet...

by Anonymous 14 years ago

Yes, but age-wise. We'd be months older.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

Yeah but where does the post talk about that? It talks about birthdays

by Anonymous 14 years ago

I wasn't speaking directly about the post itself. My comment was a follow-up thought I had. I really don't know how to explain it, but I wasn't talking about the post.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

koreans got it right.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

No, that would cause the same problems as the starting in year 1 instead of year 0

by Anonymous 14 years ago

Not to mention, even on your birthday you're a year and a day old. You would be exactly a year old the day before your birthday as you just lived through every day of the year just once.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

it's celebrating your first whole year of life

by Anonymous 14 years ago

The Japanese do it this way, too.

by Anonymous 14 years ago

it almost seems like you should celebrate your first birthday three months after being born, if you were born at nine months. That way, you'd have been "alive" for one year by then. The problem is finding out the actual conception day...

by Anonymous 14 years ago

What do you call the day you were born? Your birthday correct? (You only have one birthday unless you believe you have lived before, then you could have many birthdays.) So now a year later you need to come up a number that represents your age. The day after your birthday you are not one. You are older than one. You didn't turn one on the day a year after your 1st birthday you completed one year and now you turn two. So why do people say the baby just turned one?

by Anonymous 12 years ago